


Among the Lilies

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Flowers, Fluff, Gen, Language of Flowers, M/M, fluff AND flowers what a combination, just looked at these tags and realized that I'm dangerously sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 02:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: On the night after the Apocalypse, Aziraphale makes a discovery in Crowley's garden. Unprepared for either Aziraphale's curiosity or an Apocalypse averted, Crowley makes a few discoveries of his own.





	Among the Lilies

__

_I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he browses among the lilies._

__

_Song of Songs 6:3_

****

*******

Aziraphale had loved the Victorian Era. He still wore waistcoats he’d acquired during the nineteenth century, still listened to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan on a (now antique) gramophone, and still collected editions of _The Language of Flowers_ despite Crowley’s best efforts to clandestinely incinerate every copy.

At least the angel had moved past sending him flowers as messages. In the 1850s, Aziraphale had briefly tried to use floriography as a sort of code between them, sending bouquets of violets or daisies or baby’s breath that Crowley then had to identify and look up. He was certain Aziraphale had altered the particular copy of _The Language of Flowers_ he’d gifted to him; the idea that daisies meant, “It’s a lovely day; meet me for tea,” or that violets meant, “Would you fancy some lunch?” was preposterous. Baby’s breath, in that miracled copy, was assigned the meaning, “St. James Park, our usual spot.”

There were some flower meanings that remained unaltered in Crowley’s copy of the book. He’d once done a brief comparison with an edition in Aziraphale’s collection and discovered that yellow roses did, in fact, mean friendship. Not that yellow roses had every been sent to his doorstep. Particularly not after 1862, when he and Aziraphale had quarreled and not spoken for nearly eighty years. Crowley had winced at the sight of flowers for several of those decades. 

By the time they were on friendly terms again, the age of floriography was well and truly past. Aziraphale had even taken a few shaky steps into the new century, going so far as to acquire a telephone. Crowley called him regularly, of course, and delighted in hearing his own phone ring. But sometimes he answered his doorbell and felt strangely disappointed not to find a delivery of flowers. A fact which, when Crowley paused to consider it, was very odd given how much time and effort he’d spent on trying to rid the world of books on flowers meanings.

In any case, the point was rather moot some hundred and fifty-ish years later. In fact, the point no longer had anything to do with flowers, telephones, codes, or communication of any kind. The point was just this: 

The Apocalypse had been averted and Aziraphale and Crowley had not only helped to accomplish said feat, they’d survived the accomplishment. 

If you’d asked Crowley to describe a post-Apocalyptic scene only days earlier, he might have suggested (in a flat, humorless tone) something very like any of the _Mad Max_ movies. If you were to ask him now, he’d be compelled to describe something very different. He’d detail passing a bottle of wine back and forth with an angel while waiting for a bus, a quiet and uneventful ride back to London, and finally, he would come the moment he was actually living through, the moment in which Aziraphale stepped into his darkened flat, took a curious look around (he’d seldom been there), and, catching a glimpse of greenery in the next room, drifted off to see Crowley’s indoor garden.

Crowley didn’t remember there was anything unusual among his plants until he heard Aziraphale’s sudden and conspicuous silence. He hadn’t prepared for this. Well, he had, technically, since he’d decided to cultivate that particular plant. But he hadn’t intended for Aziraphale to just _walk in_ and see it. He’d been thinking…well, come to think of it, he didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Crowley ground his teeth through a wave of emotion he had no interest in dissecting. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “I didn’t know you grew lilies,” he said quietly. 

It took a fraction of a second for Crowley to jumpstart his stalled mind, another moment to unlock his jaw, yet another to convince his feet to move—which left no time to rearrange his face into anything less nervous. Luckily, when he stepped into the room, Aziraphale wasn’t looking at him. 

The lilies in question were, Crowley knew for a fact, the largest and most stunning specimens of their genus to ever live. He knew this because he’d raised the whole lot of them from seeds, caring for them oh so carefully for the past eleven years, plying them with water and natural light and only minimal shouting. They, unlike his other plants, were oversensitive to raised voices and responded better to a lighter touch. Crowley had even, on occasion, muttered an encouragement under his breath when he was certain his other plants wouldn’t hear. The snow-white lilies had flourished under his care, growing until they were significantly larger than any natural flowers. They never drooped, even under the weight of their silky petals and large velvet buds. Recently, the blooms had begun to show flecks of gold in their petals and stamens in a way that reminded Crowley of suns and supernovas and the glow of halos before the first cracks appeared in his world. Crowley felt that he really wasn’t exaggerating when he thought of them as magnificent.

At least they had been. 

The most vital things had survived the Apocalypse (such as Aziraphale and himself), but there had been heavy losses too. Crowley kept his thoughts safely away from his Bentley, but he mourned for Aziraphale’s shop. And the magnificent lilies that had been intended for him. 

The petals were as gray and wrinkled as old newspaper and the golden dusting looked like…dust. Something in Crowley’s chest clenched at the sight. Surely the Apocalypse wouldn’t have singled out these flowers in particular, so _what on earth…_

“Poor things,” Aziraphale whispered. “What happened to them?” So compassionate, Crowley thought in the part of his mind that wasn’t crowded with grief and questions. So kind. Even to flowers—

The pieces slotted into place. 

Crowley felt certain that if he could pinpoint the moment when the flowers lost the will to live, it would be the moment Aziraphale discorporated—or else the moment Crowley had realized he was gone. 

He wondered whether the flowers had known they were intended for Aziraphale and given up the ghost at the same time he did as an act of solidarity. Or if they’d been attuned to Crowley instead, and died quite simply of sorrow when he’d felt the first sting of Aziraphale’s loss. 

Loyal things, he thought with grudging affection. Followed swiftly by a pang at seeing them gray and lifeless. 

“The Apocalypse happened, angel. A little fallout’s not a surprise.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale agreed distractedly, stroking a finger feather light across one wilted petal. “A shame. They must have been so beautiful.” 

One crumpled petal fell to the floor with a tiny _crunch_; Aziraphale winced and pulled his hand back, still hovering close. “I didn’t know you grew lilies,” he repeated, clearly a question, if a gentle one. 

Crowley shrugged. “They’re a recent addition.” 

“How recent?”

Crowley frowned. It wasn’t like Aziraphale to press him when he was purposefully vague. Sometimes willful vagueness saved them both a lot of discomfort. He shrugged again, stiffly, and tried to spare them both with a tiny lie. 

“A decade or so,” he muttered, like it meant nothing. 

He saw Aziraphale recognize the falsehood—you couldn’t talk to someone for six millennia without developing a certain sense of when they were lying—and consider it. 

“Eleven years ago?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley had once heard Jesus say, _Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves._ He’d thought of Aziraphale when he’d heard it. 

“Yeah, that’s about right,” he admitted. No point in carrying on a perceived deception. He didn’t have the energy for proper lying anyway. 

The room around them was so quiet; even Crowley’s nerviest plants didn’t rustle with fear as they normally would with him in the room. Something about the angel’s presence had calmed them. Only Aziraphale’s unasked questions were loud in the silence. 

“They were going to be for you.” Crowley practically spat the words in his haste to be rid of them. “A ‘We Survived the Apocalypse’ type thing, I guess.” He could feel the vacuum the confession left in his chest; panic was swiftly welling to fill it. “There’s no cards for that one,” he pointed out, quite sensibly, although the good sense was mitigated by his obvious agitation. 

Aziraphale’s smile had been know to clear cloudy days and produce good moods en masse. When he unleashed it now, Crowley wondered if the flowers would revive from the power of his smile alone. 

They didn’t, of course. Crowley wasn’t sure why the lifeless flowers stung him so much. Maybe because he’d always suspected that he was raising them in vain, that something terrible would happen before he could give them away. An Apocalypse, for instance. A ridiculous idea, flowers grown by a demon and intended for an angel. He was surprised they’d survived so long, quite frankly. He’d nearly made up his mind to shrug off the whole thing and offer Aziraphale a cup of tea in the hopes that they could reset the sudden heaviness of the evening. He even opened his mouth to say it. 

“_Lilium_,” Aziraphale murmured, interrupting Crowley’s unspoken words. “Do you remember, Crowley?”

He did. 

He’d first heard the word in Rome. He thought there may have been lilies in Petronius’s restaurant, but the memory was fuzzy with the haze of alcohol. He did remember that the Romans grew quite a lot of lilies. In fact, _lilium_ was a word descended by winding paths from the earliest human words for flowers. They’d always loved flowers, humans. Particularly lilies. Aziraphale had always loved flowers, too. 

A memory surfaced, one of the the oldest Crowley would let himself remember clearly. A snake’s-eye view from a hiding place in tall and fragrant grass. The first and only angel to be assigned permanently to earth, setting foot on the verdant ground and stooping with delight to smell the very first flowers.

Crowley blinked. Pulled his sunglasses off to rub at his eyes, hoping the tingling was only fatigue and not something much worse—like _emotion_. He didn’t know why being around Aziraphale always got him so worked up. Internal explosions of laughter or anger. It was exhausting. 

“Yeah,” he said at last, thinking of so much more than Rome or lilies as he slipped his glasses into his pocket. “I remember.”

“Lilies represent rebirth,” said Aziraphale, considering the wilted remnants in front of him. 

Crowley nodded. “And death. And life.”

“And love,” Aziraphale finished. “And even resurrection.”

Crowley shook his head. “Those are all human inventions, angel. Not sure meaning’s really built into things.”

“Isn’t it?” Aziraphale asked absently. “Maybe it can be.” 

One hovering hand extended toward the lilies; Crowley felt the sudden warm tingle of a miracle. Aziraphale’s fingers traced the length of a few stems and petals, almost a caress. The stems grew thick and tall again, petals filling out into lush white and gold, the honey-sweet smell of the flowers permeating the air. Crowley’s plants, so silent until now, rustled lightly as they turned to look. 

“There now,” Aziraphale said, dropping his hands slowly. “No harm done. Oh you _are_ beautiful.”

He smiled, first at the flowers and then at Crowley. Crowley had seen this smile before, a warm, happy thing, always bright and brief. It was an old pattern between them, Aziraphale’s smile that disappeared with a cough or an _oh look at the time._ Crowley held his gaze and waited for it to disappear. He saw the moment coming, the cracks growing at the edge of his smile. But this time, despite a little wobble, a moment of visible struggle, the moment held. Aziraphale’s smile was still in place, bright and soft as the flowers beside him. 

Something in Crowley’s chest was burning. Or swelling, or exploding, or something similarly hot and disastrous. 

_Oh,_ Crowley thought, with the distant interest of a bystander watching a burning house. _I know what this is._ Followed swiftly by the feeling of a bystander who realizes it’s _his_ house that's burning.

He’d never been sure exactly what humans were feeling when they wrote their songs and sonnets and did incredibly stupid things for someone else’s sake. Temporary insanity, he’d thought. Their little brains were just piles of electrified meat, after all. 

But he was in a human-shaped body, and what was happening had nothing whatever to do with his brain. He’d thought the experience humans were always obsessing about—love—was a wet and messy thing. An exaggeration of the physical sex drive, or an over-sentimentalization of the need to have family and community bonds. Crowley _had_ seen great love stories in his time, and even seen real acts of sacrifice, but he’d thought it was more sad than anything else. What good were bonds that had to end, or acts of love that killed the one who performed them? He’d always thought the bits of love that weren’t physical had become so broken in the fracas between heaven, hell, and humanity, that it couldn’t be worth the pain it caused. 

But now…

Now Crowley was standing in his flat, smiling softly at an angel and stupid white flowers and they were all practically glowing with it. There was nowhere he’d rather be and no one he’d rather be with. Was this…

_…love?_

He cast back in his mind, trying to sort through the accounts of all the humans he’d known. Tried even to think of what God had said about love, long ago, in the beginning. 

It was hard, having no real context. Maybe it was more of a know it when you see it sort of thing. 

He looked between Aziraphale and the lilies he’d grown for him…and thought he might see it.

The warmth in his chest was making it very hard to breathe. He was also feeling so overwhelmingly glad to be alive with Aziraphale that the possibility of overdramatic embraces was growing exponentially with every passing moment. 

Desperate to save himself, yet unable to stop smiling like a punchdrunk fool, Crowley grasped for words. “Shut up,” he said with terrible fondness. 

Aziraphale’s smile only widened. He moved quickly; Crowley found himself embraced by the angel before he could blink in surprise. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, gripping him tightly. He released Crowley just as quickly, letting the demon go before he could figure out what to do with his hands. He stood, wide-eyed and _hug-rumpled_ in the middle of his own flat and had no idea what to do.

He didn’t know what love meant in his context. But he did know what life looked like without Aziraphale. It looked like flames that burned all the color out of the world and left him without the will even to save himself from the Apocalypse. Without the will to do anything beyond drinking himself into a stupor, trying not to feel the pain he was drowning in. 

What did love look like in a demon? What _could_ it look like? 

The humans seemed to think that love had to do with sex. Or death. Or some disturbing mixture of the two. At least that seemed to be the case in the human’s favorite love stories. For an immortal being who took bodies out for jaunts without actually being one, this was very confusing indeed. 

He didn’t know what grand gestures of love one could make without sex or death, but maybe an eternity would be sufficient to figure it out. 

He wondered momentarily if snapping chains open in the Bastille, fooling Gabriel into keeping Aziraphale stationed on earth, and burning his feet on holy ground with a bomb hurtling toward him might count as grand gestures. He decided, diplomatically, to postpone the thought for later consideration.

Aziraphale cleared his throat, straightened his tartan bowtie, pulled at his waistcoat. Sufficiently straightened, he said, “What would you say to some tea, Crowley?” 

_I’d say I love you,_ Crowley didn’t say, because he was far too distracted by memories. 

In the time when Aziraphale loved the Victorian language of flowers, Crowley had developed an interest in sketching. It was a tidy side hustle that allowed for lots of mini-reports that looked good downstairs. Years' worth of people saying, “Is that _really_ what I look like?” helped to germinate well-sown seeds of discontent, envy, and self-obsession. It was a real killing every bird with one stone deal. Although perhaps Crowley was more proverbial bird than proverbial stone-thrower now; if he was still in practice, he reflected, he’d have whipped out a pencil and notebook and desperately tried to capture an angel among the lilies. 

As it was, he couldn’t quite help lifting his phone and ordering, “Smile.” Aziraphale did, of course. And, against his better judgement, so did Crowley.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of quick notes:
> 
> When Crowley thinks back to tricking Gabriel into keeping Aziraphale on earth, that is, of course, a reference to the deleted scene from the GO script book. It was such a delightful scene and I'm forever sad that it wasn't filmed. If there are any fic realizations of that scene, please rec them to me immediately. ;) 
> 
> I'm imagining that Crowley didn't take to spitefully burning floriography books until after he and Aziraphale had their falling out in the 1860s...ouch. :( 
> 
> I _agonized_ over what music from the Victorian Era Aziraphale might still enjoy, and decided that he must have seen and enjoyed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Something so light and sparkling seemed like something he'd enjoy on the surface. Particularly since he would have been going by himself in those years. D: Then I got to thinking that maybe Aziraphale _really_ loved some of the Romantics who were dominating the European music scene in the mid-1800s, like Chopin and Liszt...and I got sidetracked thinking of what could be a whole other fic: Aziraphale and Crowley going to see Liszt's famous piano recitals. Surely they must have gone to see the rock star figures like Paganini (whose talents were so great that they were rumored to have infernal origin...dealer's choice on whether that's true in this 'verse or if Crowley just likes to laugh about the human rumors. XD) and Liszt, just to check it out for themselves. Liszt's music was colorful, sensual, virtuosic for both expression and for show; I really think that both Crowley and Aziraphale would have loved seeing him perform. And maybe they went to his recitals in concert halls and Parisian salons together...at least until 1862. D: And then I thought about Aziraphale no longer going to see Liszt perform, and instead going to other performances closer to home by himself. Like those operettas. Maybe Aziraphale influenced Liszt towards the church later in his life when he became an ordained priest after living the playboy lifestyle for so long. Probably somewhat selfishly, because, as Crowley said, all the other great composers ended up downstairs. XD Or, if you prefer ultra-angst, maybe Crowley influenced Liszt towards the church as a secret gift to Aziraphale when they weren't on speaking terms. Ohhhh pain. 
> 
> And finally, idek what this fic is. All I know is that someone gave me a bouquet that included a few lilies for Teacher’s Day, and I noticed sadly that one of them was wilting. I was suddenly struck by the idea of Aziraphale reviving a lily…and all the Biblical references to lilies…and the interesting and copious meanings people have assigned to lilies through time. And thus a fic was born lol. Let me know if you enjoyed it???


End file.
